SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Hypertension and Risk of Post-Operative Cognitive Dysfunction (POCD): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
I. Feinkohl1, *, G. Winterer2, T. Pischon1, 2, 3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 13
First Page: 27
Last Page: 42
Publisher ID: CPEMH-13-27
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901713010027
Article History:
Received Date: 10/10/2016Revision Received Date: 27/01/2017
Acceptance Date: 31/01/2017
Electronic publication date: 18/05/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Post-operative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) occurs frequently after major surgery. Hypertension is well-established as a risk factor for age-related cognitive impairment, but it is unclear whether or not it also increases the risk of POCD.
Objective:
To evaluate the role of hypertension in POCD risk in a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Method:
PubMed, Ovid SP and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews were searched for longitudinal studies of adults undergoing surgery with reporting of hypertension, blood pressure and/or anti-hypertensive treatment associations with POCD as relative risks or odds ratios. Fixed-effects meta-analyses were performed using Review Manager (version 5.3).
Results:
Twenty-four studies on 4317 patients (mean age 63 years) were included. None of the studies had set out to assess hypertension as a risk factor for POCD. Hypertension was used as a categorical predictor throughout and only 2 studies adjusted for potential confounders. Across all 24 studies, hypertension was not significantly associated with POCD risk (RR 1.01; 95% CI 0.93, 1.09; p=0.82), though among 8 studies with >75% males, we found hypertension associations with a 27% increased risk of POCD (RR 1.27, 95% CI 1.07, 1.49; p=0.005).
Conclusion:
Our findings do not support the hypothesis that hypertension is a risk factor for POCD. However, since none of the studies included in our analysis were hypothesis-driven and most did not adjust for potential confounders, further systematic investigations are needed to evaluate the role of hypertension in the epidemiology of POCD.
